


play it sweet and low

by ringingglass



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: (who needs plot!!), M/M, they love each other!, this is just entirely fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 15:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17645471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ringingglass/pseuds/ringingglass
Summary: a brief history of Jace and Addax's relationship, as told through song.





	play it sweet and low

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rib14](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rib14/gifts).



> cw for mentions of alcohol and (of course) counter/weight spoilers !

**i.**

The first time Addax hears Jace sing, he has to clap a hand over his mouth and tiptoe backwards out of the showers to keep from laughing out loud. 

He’s just finished sparring with Tea, and he needs a shower – badly. But it can wait until he gets to his quarters if it means not interrupting Jace’s goofy but impassioned rendition of some horribly cheesy propaganda song EarthHome commissioned not long after the war started. Addax, surprised, feels a giggle bubbling up in his chest, feels lighter than he has in a very long time. With all the tension in the fleet, he finds he gets lost in his head a lot of the time. He can’t snap from an argument with Orth to banter with one of his peers so easily, but Jace – Jace has a blitheness to him that one can't help but admire. He’s seen him fretting over simulations, fine-tuning the controls in his mech to keep his hands busy, anxiety speaking to him the way Peace interrupts Addax’s own thoughts. Still, Addax envies this exuberance, sometimes, even if it’s a front. It’s good to hear him sing.

It isn’t until he reaches his room that he catches the fond smile lingering on his face.

 

**ii.**

The second time it happens, Addax doesn’t laugh so much as forget how to do anything.

There’s no comical slant to his voice this time, just a gentle, lilting tune that sounds heartbreakingly sincere. Addax forgets himself as he stands there listening to Jace spin a tale of a statue left to rust in a town square, ogled and loved and mocked by passersby and standing still, all the while, as scenery in others’ lives. It’s bittersweet, with echoes of a lost love and a forgotten war, and Jace and Addax both lose themselves in it. Then the song ends, and Addax startles to realize the water still trickling from the showerhead is cold. He hurries to wash up, but the song stays behind in his head after Jace has left, the refrain echoing within the tile walls. He doesn’t have the voice of an angel, exactly, but it’s earnest and sweet and (mostly) in tune.

He mentions the encounter to Tea at lunch, going for nonchalant but evidently failing, and she raises a single eyebrow as he tells the story.

“This is Rethal you’re talking about, yeah?”

Addax nods. Tea barks out a laugh, but her eyes crinkle with a sort of kindness.

“I wouldn’t mark him down as a potential EarthHome idol, but if you insist. I suppose the acoustics in the showers make everyone sound a little better,” she says, a knowing smile just slightly quirking one side of her mouth.

Addax huffs a little.

“I never said he was impressive, just better than I expected. Not that I expected – not that I  _ imagined _ –”

Jace takes that moment to slide onto the bench next to Addax, his left leg brushing up against Addax’s right in a way that sets his nerves on edge.

“Who’s impressive, now? I can only imagine you’re talking about my charades skills,” he says, referencing their game the night before that had been loud enough to garner a knock on the door from a soldier kept awake by their yelling.

Jace’s eyes twinkle as he teases, and he steals a roll from Addax’s plate while he stammers. Tea chimes in, saving him.

“Addax was just telling me about how Orth’s been hiding his foosball skills from us this whole time. I suppose it does involve some degree of strategy…”

The conversation trails off from there, and Addax shoots Tea a covert, grateful look. Jace chatters excitedly about his newly-thought-up idea of setting up a foosball tournament with the crew, eyes lighting and hands gesticulating as he raises the prospect to the two of them. He glances at Addax in the middle of a sentence, eager the way he is in meetings, the way he was when Addax first decided he liked the earnest OriCon pilot, and – oh.

Time doesn’t freeze the way the cliches suggest, but Addax forgets the conversation, forgets where they are, finds himself imagining how Jace’s hand would feel under his own, whether he runs hot like Addax imagines, and – 

“Rethal, you good? You’re starting to look like me when I get in the zone.”

When Addax comes back to himself he sees a note of concern in Jace’s look, anxiety etched into that ever-present wrinkle between his eyes that Addax has the sudden, tender urge to smooth out with a kiss.

Addax blinks. 

“Fine.”

 

**iii.**

He doesn’t think about Jace’s singing, after it all. Well, that’s not exactly true – he  _ tries _ not to.

Sometimes, when Addax wakes from a nightmare, his mind grasps at happy memories to soothe him, and he’ll find himself reminiscing about the night Jace led the group in a rousing rendition of the admittedly ridiculous OriCon war anthem that sounded more like a drinking song than anything. Or the time Tea let slip that it was her birthday and he and Sokrates tried to get a barbershop quartet together to serenade her in the mess hall (with no luck, much to their chagrin). He ended up borrowing Orth’s guitar, though he only knew two chords, and improvising a short tune in her honor later that night, when the six of them had retired to the common room. Addax doesn’t remember the song, but he remembers laughing until it felt like his ribs might crack, and how it felt the same when he looked at Jace, his eyes shining with mirth and Addax’s own heart threatening to force its way out of his ribcage. He remembers Orth, an unexpectedly loud drunk, Natalya dozing off in Tea’s lap (special agent she may have been, but she could never hold her liquor). Tea, looking pointedly at Addax as Jace lost all concept of personal space as the night wore on. Jace. Jace finding a home for himself on Addax’s shoulder, Jace’s breath on his neck, innocent, Jace’s hand in his hair, fond. And how Addax had wanted nothing more than to stay in that moment forever.

He remembers a lot from the war. Considers it his penance, perhaps, that he hold onto the memory of what happened as a warning never to let himself get pushed that far again. (In later years, he’ll laugh that he ever thought  _ he  _ was the one reliving their history.)

He writes it down sometimes, when he can’t get it out of his head. Takes to writing more than those stories, writing letters he’ll never send, writing poetry – a surprise to even himself – and once, only once, a song.

He rips it out of the journal as soon as it’s finished, ready to ball it up and throw it in the bin next to his desk. He pauses.

When he meets Jace that day in the square, he remembers the small rectangle folded neatly in his pocket.

 

**iv.**

After Rigor, after the losses, after the groundwork for a new life in the Golden Branch Star Sector has begun, the two of them reach out to the friends who survived. It doesn’t take long to make a list of names.

Aria and Jacqui look tired when their faces show up on the vid mess screen for the first time since the war, but they also look younger, somehow. Jamil is there, too, fingers clenched on the back of Addax’s office chair at the sight of her best friend. Addax isn’t sure what happened between them, whether perhaps they just lost touch – he doesn’t care. He’s had his share of estranged friendships, thank you very much, and he won’t let theirs become another.

It’s awkward, no doubt, exchanging pleasantries with people you went into battle with, people you may as well be strangers to. But after a while they share hesitant laughs, and Jamil’s face is softer than he’s seen it in a long time, and they make plans to meet up soon. Addax feels the weight of loose ends begin to lift.

Mako is harder to get ahold of, but Addax is diligent. Still, he gets no answers, and he grows worried.

Eventually – and he knows it’s an abuse of power, knows Jamil would have his head if she knew – he takes matters into his own hands, locating Mako’s hideout in the Rapid Evening records and paying him a visit himself.

Mako answers the door on the fourth ring, his once-bright eyes both alert and weary, somehow.

“I’m busy,” he says.

“I’m sure there will be another time,” he says.

“There are things I have to do. Things that won’t get done without me,” he says.

He makes a lot of excuses, and then Addax recognizes it. The dullness behind his eyes. The papers and dishes strewn across his floor, not haphazardly but in a way that indicates his unyielding focus. This must have been how Jace saw him all those years ago, he realizes, but he can’t dwell on it. Addax grabs Mako by the arm, gently but firmly, and closes the door shut behind them with a decisive click.

They go to Constellation – it’s close, it’s public, and it has food. Addax makes Mako eat a shitty bagel, and they sit there in silence for a few minutes before he explains his behavior, what he saw in Mako’s eyes that made him react. Mako, ever in denial, brushes it off as hypervigilance, but he talks, at least. An hour goes by and Mako may not be the most emotionally vulnerable person out there, but he tells Addax about his projects (in hushed, coded terms given the ears nearby), and asks about his life. Asks about Aria, once, embarrassed.

At the end, Addax walks Mako back to his place and makes him swear to visit.  _ I know where you live, after all,  _ he says, a dumb joke, but worth it for the twinkle he swears he sees in Mako’s eye as he turns away.

 

A few months later, on the anniversary of Rigor’s defeat, they gather: Addax, Jace, Orth, Mako, Aria, Jacqui, Jamil. Those abandoned to their grief, left to mourn alone or with one another. This night, they choose the latter.

It’s Mako’s idea to make the pasta. He’s not an especially good cook, but he’d watched Cass make it enough times to get the general idea. Jace makes the baklava that was Tea’s favorite, and Orth lights a candle that reminds him of Nat. They don’t spend the whole night talking about their friends, but their presence is felt all the same. They tell stories, sometimes. Laugh. Cry. Even Mako seems more relaxed than usual. And late at night, when the grief has faded into joy that they are here, that they are  _ alive _ , that they get to see and build the world their friends sacrificed themselves for, they do what people at all good parties do: they bring out a karaoke machine.

Aria and Mako perform their old routine and remember an impressive amount before collapsing into a fit of giggles on the sidelines. Jace grins at the opportunity, pulling Addax up with him before he can object. The song shuffles automatically, and it’s –

Aria’s laughter grows delirious as she recognizes the beat as one of her old songs, and she and Jace end up in a duet (Addax never listened to her music much, never mind that he can’t carry a tune to save his life).

He sits down next to Orth, who’s been watching this all play out in characteristic silence. It’s not a bad kind of silence. He seems peaceful, and he deserves that after everything.  They watch and listen to the cacophony that plays out before them, and they smile.

 

**v.**

After Pax comes to them, the two do a pretty fair job of dividing the parenting work, Addax thinks. Jace changes a diaper, Addax goes searching for blankie, Jace takes her to her appointment, Addax cleans the house while they’re gone. It’s a simple life, and it suits them. They're owed a bit of simplicity, after all.

Still, despite their histories of late nights, early mornings, and odd shifts, somehow the hardest part of parenting is waking at three a.m. to hear their daughter wailing for the fourth time that night.

The bed is warm and Addax’s body is sluggish, but he rolls over to get up, only to find Jace’s spot empty. He listens, and sure enough, there’s his distinctive voice on the baby monitor. Pax’s cries have quieted somewhat, and then Addax hears something he hasn’t heard in – it doesn’t matter. (It matters. Right now, there are more important things.)

It’s the same song that played when they met in Centralia all those years ago. They had danced to it at their wedding, too, and Addax feels the warmth that filled him on both those occasions coming back to him as his listens to his husband’s gentle voice and thinks about the life they’ve made.

Neither he nor Jace had planned to live this long, if they were being brutally honest. Addax knew the survival rates of candidates, and Jace was anxious, impulsive at times, detrimentally painstaking at others, consumed by his need to offer himself up to the cause in protection of his friends, his people. A future like this was never on the horizon. Addax wouldn’t have known how to imagine it if he’d tried.

They’ve lost a lot, to be certain, and their losses take up space as reminders of their past: a small photo of Tea on their dresser, a note from Sokrates in their drawer. But there are new memories, now. Jace’s weary smile at him as he wipes up Pax’s mess, kissing his husband’s cheek as he leaves for work, their weekly vid messages with Mako, Aria and Jacqui’s faces shining up at them from their holiday cards. There is joy to be found, after and in the midst of it all.

Jace comes back to bed then, and Addax, with his husband in his arms, falls asleep thinking only of how lucky he is.

**Author's Note:**

> hey riley, you know how we joked about getting assigned to each other?? WELL. happy secret samol, pal
> 
> (title is from build me up from bones by sarah jarosz; the song jace sings in ii is us by regina spektor. come yell about these boys with me on twitter at @scholarschism!)


End file.
